Testing, testing, one two three..

Hi there, kiddo,

Life is full of tests.  Not the happy, paper, get a grade and move on types.  Life has "surprise" and if you don't make it then you get a knife in the back.  Life can be full of unkind things.  Other people too.  Without God I don't know how I would get by.

So I have a test in just over 2 weeks.  I have been told by a very good engineer that "It is like they took all the toughest exams from my senior year of college and stapled them together".  Kiddo, I am unprepared.  Underprepared.  But the best knowledge that I have right now is that if I don't find a good way to pass it, then I am in a much rougher spot.  This fall is scheduled to have some personal challenges.

You need me.  You need me to be standing and capable.  You need me to be able to provide well for you and your mathmommy and the math-micro (your baby sister).

One step at a time.  It is how to climb a mountain, or walk a road of 10,000 miles.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other with good consistency.  Don't run, just walk consistently.  Walk consistently.

I gotta go shower, shave, and get ready for work.  I hope you have fun playdates today.  I hope your Tuesday is good to you.

-mathdad

Robots, software and hope

Hey there, Kiddo

You don't want to go to ballet class.  I am secretly glad.  I endorse and aggressively support your passions, but I don't see it having a high yield or a great shelf life.  Does every little girl who practices ballet go on to be a successful ballerina?  Much less than everyone who takes a guitar lesson becomes a musician.  I want you to have a future, and I know that it starts now.  I am worried though that you want to quit for the wrong reasons.  You might be abdicating hard work.  That would be an epic fail.  It would be an even greater epic fail on my part to support it.

Your mother is making (great) progress in teaching you to read.  Not like my mother did where she could not tell the difference between memorization and actual reading.  My daughter reads new stuff.  You.  You are learning to read.  Literacy is big.  Computer literacy might be bigger.

Here are things that I am finding:

• RobotC - Is real-world useful.  I learned logo in 6th grade and it was pretty much wasted.  So in one room in one school I could learn to make one particular software do something.  I couldn't take it with me when I moved (and my psycho mom, justly terrified of my psycho dad, spent years and years and years moving every 3 $#@$#@ months, so I have moved ~78 times in my life and only 3 times in the last decade.  You need to have something to take with you.  You need something that has real world substance.  If I try and throw you into RobotC right now you are likely to bounce right off because it is pretty complex.  You might.  (note to self: build experiment here, test)
• Karel++ - Is a logo-like introduction that gives some C/Java language familiarity.  Robomind.  AgentSheets.  Toontalk.
• HacketyHack, Scratch.
• csunplugged.org, code academy
• ...

I'm going about this the wrong way.  

I know MatLab.  I have used it throughout my Bachelors and Masters in Mechanical Engineering.  I am pretty good at it.  I can't use it at home because I can't afford to pay off $5000/year license.  That kills me.  I am very unhappy with it.  I should have been able to make re-sellable software from day 1.  I have thought about Python/SciPy/NumPy/MatPlotLib but it is going to take some ramp-up and doesn't have the extensive libraries that MatLab has.  Right now it looks like the language to learn is, surprisingly enough, "R".  It is the favorite of stats students and has tons (and tons) of libraries.  It is open source, but it is the ugliest thing in the world to learn to program.  It is a mishmash of styles and rules.  It is the Millennium Falcon: a hunk of junk that can make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs (whatever that means).

The right tool for you will:

• allow you to do something ridiculously simple with ease that a 4 year old can get.  You are a freaky smart 4 year old, so lets make this requirement mean that the software is something that an 8 year old can get and start there.
• teach you the basics of programming, not just drafting or pretty pictures.
• Stage you for a real language.  By "real" I mean that a real language can
• program a microcontroller for Arduino, Microchip, or a big seller for Parallax.  If you can't build a PlasmaCAM or ARC Flashlight with it, then it is not powerful enough.
• is open source or free to use for you day 1.  If you want to make and sell a game as a 5 year old, then I want you to be empowered to do it.  You shouldn't be charged $5000 US to do it.
• will run on the beater computer that I have at home, and doesn't require the latest iDongle that costs a months pay (or more) to buy.
• can make pretty/arty/beautiful stuff.  Can make good reliable daily-use software.  Can make things that you would want to make.  This means solid data access, good operating system independence (or flexibility, or not frozen to one and only one OS)
• Being able to have GUI elements would make this a slam dunk

I should solicit all of my programming friends and ask them for input, and then record it (with some level of anonymization) about what the requirements should be for a language that can be effectively and quickly taught to my 4 year old, but can be the tool of choice for world-class programmers.  Things to do.

I have to get some good jogging music on, and another cup of coffee, and go assemble your new(er) bunk bed so that both you and your sister are able to sleep in your bedroom.  That way, once I get my weight/snoring/apnea issue under control, I can sleep again in the same room as my wife.  

I hope for you that you can have a good future.  I look now at the girls that I grew up with who were interested in "fashion" or such.  They are for the most part nothing they hoped to be.  They became nothing.  I don't want that for you.  I want to equip you with the basic tools so that you can be something.  Anything?  I want you to be something good.  I want your life to be a benefit to those around you.  I want you to make a difference for the better in your family, in your community, and in the world.  In ten thousand years, when our nations are dust, and our constructions are dust, and our words are dust - I want the echoes of the lives we lived to endure.  The only way that they can do that is as a shock wave in human lives - something very good that is carried forward in time.  All the inclinations of the fallen man are dust and have nothing.  In ten thousand years you will not be able to find a few cells stacked together of them.  Know God.  Love God.  Obey God.  Honor God.  Honor God with heart, mind, soul, and strength.  You have an exceptional mind so you have an exceptional responsibility to honor God with it.  In doing this, and doing it well, you can have the fingerprints that transform the world for the better for later on.

Assuming we live so long.  Assuming we can make it there.  I love you.  I love your amazing mathmommy too.  Just in case I'm not next to you, my spirit is next to you.  You get to see a piece of me in these words - it is a very limited medium so there is a limited vision, but it is infinitely more that no vision.  Even when you have no vision, there are those who love you, who through that love are with you.  Not in a Richard Bach sense, but in a "god-sense".  Big ideas too large for letters, or words.  In the sense of the Great Divorce.  Who knew that the narrow pipe of human communication had so many ideas it was incapable of transporting.  

Gotta go.  Love you so.

80th Day, 2013

Happy 80th day.  It is the 80th day of the year.  It is nearly 6am.  I can't sleep.  I wake up 4am-ish.  Not enough sleep makes me grumpy.  Grump grump grump.

Last weekend your uncle J-math and his kids were here.  We went to the zoo.
  Here is a picture of you and your two cousins.  It looks like you had a good time.  I get the idea that kiddos your age don't retain much, so I'm wondering if things like Disney or Movies have any value at all for you.  Maybe they are an opiate for parents?

Your other cousins Keen-Bean and i-Man now live here.  Keen-Bean is fifteen.  I hope she is nice, but she might be mean.  Who she becomes is yet to be seen.  I think both my sisters see past her smoke screen.  They want to hide it, but she's in the ravine.  They have no pride in her, so she is no queen.   I guess that ship has sailed.  And that is a sad thought, that dark has prevailed.

I become Dr. Seuss-like when tired.  

Am I supposed to tell you the apparitions that visit me in my sleep?  If I do, do they in that visit you?

I ache.  Teeth.  Shoulder.  Hips.  Barometric pressure is changing, a storm system is going through and it makes all my old and new broken parts hurt.  I want you to have good parts that work, and are used well in good things.  I don't like to think of you as having broken parts.  A wart or scar here and there might be tolerable, but something important missing for you?  I don't want it.  I want you to be excellent and have what you need.

Why is it so often that getting what our hearts desire can corrupt our hearts so well?  Are our hearts so built for self-defeat in their wants?  *sigh*

I have to stage for today.  Success is earned.  Nobody is entitled, but you can get it with hard work, and discipline.

Pi(e) day, 2013

Happy Pi(e) day, mathfamily,

We ate pie, apple and lemon.  We had pizza pie.  My sweet mathwifey even got me pi-based T-shirts.

It is 3.14.'13.  It is symmetric, pi(e) day, any way you slice it.

-Mathdad

March 2013

Hello Mathbaby.  Mathgirl.
...
Mathgirl and Mathbaby.  Mathmommy.

It is nearly Friday.  It's tuesday.  It isn't nearly friday.  I'm ditzy.  I'm tired, or old, or low on blood sugar.  I'm something.

It is nearly pi-day.  Pi is a geometric idea.  It started as a geometric idea, but like many mathematical things, it can live in many places including geometry.  We eat pies on pi-day.  pi.  Pie.  They go together for mathpeople.  We are mathpeople.  Mathbaby, mathgirl, and mathdad.

Here are some pi-day links.  In 20 years they won't be around, but your aunties, and grandfolks who look at this site can read it and get some context.  Here you go:

• http://www.piday.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day
• http://www.exploratorium.edu/pi/index.html

I like pecan pie.  Mathgirl.  You are nearly five but it is still hard to not say mathbaby.  Mathgirl, when I ask you what your favorite pie is, what do you say?  "Apple.  My only favorite is apply.  I just love apple."  That is a quote, saved for posterity.

You like my smartpen.  I hope it is useful.  I need a secret weapon for study, or I am going to get wasted in reviews.  I gotta always be sharp or they are just going to throw me away.  You gotta keep practicing in order to stay at the top of your game.  I gotta keep my mind sharp.  They didn't tell me the kind of toughness that was needed in life.  I learned it the hard way.  Why is it that humanity leaves its callouses on my soul?  I hope that through me it isn't leaving callouses on you.  Infectious diseases.  They aren't just biological.  Viral. They are biological but are communicated through human perception instead of through the medium of proteins that comprise bacteria or viruses.  You can get emotional ... diseases.  You can also get good things.  They are both communicated.  

My friend S. says that disney princesses are NOT evil.  She says they are entertainment and leave no lasting impact outside of fun.  People are like trees - the outer rings are built on the shapes of the inner ones.  If something changes the shape of an early ring, it changes that inner ring, and can influence the shape of the tree.  

I hope you are well.  I hope the years treat you well.  I imagine talking to you through a tunnel in time, with your grown-up faces peering into it.  I hope you are well.  I want you to have good things.

I still want to go geocaching.  I'm going to be sad if we don't start doing that.  

Also you are nearly 5.  I want you in a martial art.  Every girl related to me for 2 generations has been assaulted.  Ugly word.  I do not want that for you.  I want you safe.  I want you safe.  I want you safe.  I can't be there to teach you how to run well, or not be stupid, or ... at last resort .. to be able to punch a guy in the throat.  Tai Chi.  Gives you grace, fluidity, and softness.  Also lets you get away well.  In the last resort, it gives you a very solid hit to the throat.  I hope it makes you graceful.  I hope it gives you health, balance, and strength.  I hope you never have to use it to break a throat.  If you need to - I want you to be able to.  

Time to go shopping.  Not so many pictures here.  

You are reading with mommy - you are learning to read.  I love your smart.  I love your learn.

Don't learn the wrong lessons.  Don't take the bandaids that the world teaches you to use on bullet-wounds - they have no healing power.  Get something useful, or use nothing, but don't put a lie over it to make the death stick.  Don't learn the wrong lessons.

-Mathdad